Elevators often lead to an abrupt end in World of Warcraft. In Midnight, however, an elevator even defeated an entire feature.
It is an old meme in the World of Warcraft community with a kernel of truth. No mythical raid boss is as dangerous as elevators in the game. Sometimes you get crushed by them, sometimes you fall off them, and other times they move so fast that your character can’t catch up and crashes to the ground below.
However, because they wanted to fix such an elevator, Blizzard had to disable a core feature of Midnight for an entire day: housing.
What was discussed? In an interview with Psybear_tv, the Game Director of World of Warcraft, Ion Hazzikostas, talked about many details regarding the upcoming Patch 12.1, as well as the current state of the game. He shared an anecdote about how a last-minute bug fix led to something breaking on the other side of the game.
What was fixed? The elevator in the Siege of Orgrimmar raid had a bug. You could fall through it. So Blizzard made a last-minute adjustment to the code so that characters no longer fell through the elevator and instead landed on it – just as it should be.
A small bug fix cripples a feature on the other side of the game
What did Blizzard do then? When Patch 12.0.7 went live, it came with a massive restriction. The entire housing areas had to be temporarily disabled. No one could enter their own house or that of friends or acquaintances.
What were the consequences of the bug? If Blizzard had not disabled housing, there would have been massive problems that would have essentially ruined the setup of all characters. Because when you entered a housing instance, the game caused all decorations placed above the ground – those that floated in the air or hung on walls – to be pulled down to the ground and anchored there. This also resulted in an immediate save.
The result: All interiors would have been completely destroyed and all characters would have faced a pile of rubble that could have nullified hundreds of hours of work.
You can see the corresponding story in the interview at minute 36:00:
How did the problem occur? The culprit was that Blizzard wanted to do “too much” this time. They had already locked in a “Release Candidate” that was stable and that they were happy with. Less than 2 days before the release, they received feedback that the elevator in the Siege of Orgrimmar was bugged and that players could simply fall through it.
Since this is content that some players still visit for transmog, they decided to fix the small error. However, they only noticed the repercussions so late that there was no chance to fix it before the launch – which is why housing had to be disabled for a day.
Cortyn says: Sometimes it’s curious how different contents in World of Warcraft or other games are interconnected. As an outsider, one often thinks that fixing a small, annoying bug can’t be that demanding. However, the fact that it can lead to really devastating problems in entirely different parts of the game is hard to believe. It’s all the more entertaining to hear such stories to understand how interconnected elements in WoW really are.
While such errors may only last briefly, some can persist for months – like the most bugged area WoW has ever had.
Did you know that bugs in WoW are sometimes so interconnected with other content? Can you imagine that the code sometimes takes such detours and some problems have consequences in completely different areas? Or do you think that’s just an excuse?
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